Will I with the shepherds mingle,
On the fresh oases tingle,
Or the file of camels lading,
Go, with musk and coffee trading,
To and fro on all the traces
'Twixt the towns and desert places.
Up and down the crag-paths filing,
Hafis, thine the songs beguiling,
When the happy leader swinging
On his high-packed mule is singing
Keen enough the stars to brighten
And the robbers to affrighten.
Will in baths and wine-shops linger,
And recall thee, holy singer;
Thee, too, when in my caresses
Darling drops her amber tresses.
May the love in poet-phrases
Give the Houris' selves new crazes.
Let him know who would begrudge it,
Or perchance at all misjudge it,
That the words of poets' daring,
Up to Paradise repairing,
Ever lightly tap the portal
To entreat the life immortal.
Maketh one a lucky man:
If the charm in onyx is,
Print thereon a holy kiss ;
What is evil it will chase,
Thee protect, and all the place;
And if the engraven trace
Showeth clear the name of Allah,
Thee it fires to love and valor :
Women specially discover
That the Talisman 's their lover.
When on paper signs are set,
They compose the Amulet:
Only there's no need to trim it
By the gem's too narrow limit,
And the pious soul disburses
To the paper longer verses:
Men the sheets believing wear,
As the monk his scapular.
No mystic senses 'neath the Inscript lie, It is itself, and says what thou dost say, What candid likings all thy heart betray, 'Tis this repeats: I say it! I!
I shall seldom bring Abraxas!
That's the strange and the contorted,
Which a moody whim reported,
Feigning sense that ought to tax us;
If absurd appears the thing,
Say I perhaps Abraxas bring.
A signet-ring 'tis hard engraving,
The highest sense in narrowest space;
But if a sterling matter be thy craving,
Thou wilt in flash of thought the sentence trace.
T my saddle's value rate me riding!
Leave you poor in huts and tents abiding! Gallop free through places waste and urban, Nothing but the stars above my turban.
Thy leaders fine by land and sea,
The stars, He placed on high :
Ravish'd with them let us be,
Up looking at the sky.
TALISMANS.
ALLAH'S is the Orient!
Allah's is the Occident!
North and South, the countries stand
In the quiet of His hand.
Justice out of each one's claim
He, the Only Just, will frame:
Of His hundred names, we laymen
Praise this most, the Just One! amen.
Coil of error may confuse me,
Yet Thou knowest how to loose me.
When I act, when I compose,
Give me rightness as it goes.
Though I think and plan the earthy,
Can make it tend still to the worthy;
By the dust unsmother'd may my being
Reach by native stress to height of seeing.
Favor twofold in breathing see:
The air we draw, then set it free ;
One is constraint, the other bliss:
So wondrously life mingled is.
Thank God when He constrains thy will,
And when He lets thee, thank Him still.5
THAT Arabs o'er the waste of sand
May wander happy-hearted,
Has Allah for their comfort plann'd,
And favors four imparted.
The Turban first, such grace has not
All monarchs' crowns together;
A Tent, unpegg'd from every spot
To roam without a tether.
A Sword, no castle with defence
So gallantly can glisten;
A Song, for all the day's intents, -
To which the maidens listen.
Her shawl beneath does not demur,
I sit, the flower-commender,
She knows well what belongs to her,
Is blithe to me and tender.
Right daintily on flowers and fruit
I know how to regale you;
Wilt have moralities to boot,
The freshest shall not fail you.
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